The Workers: An Experiment in Reality. The West

by Walter A. Wyckoff

Gradation in respectability in the matter of dress, from the point at which a man is unmistakably in his working-clothes to that in which he readily passes as a workman in his Sunday best, has furnished the means of some range in the experiment of church-going. From the first I have gone regularly to church. But appearing in the garb of a day-laborer in the fashionable churches of a great city is far removed as a matter of experience from attending the service of a village meeting-house. I am inclined to think that the latter would be the greater ordeal to a real workman. Country parishioners turn out on Sundays with an amazing show of dress, and one of their own number in flannel shirt and labor-stained clothing would be oddly conspicuous; and he would feel his peculiarity much more, I imagine, than if he found himself among persons whom he did not know on equal social footing. For me the case was different and was wholly artificial, but in going to church in the country, dressed in working clothes which had been carefully protected by overalls, and mended, and brushed, and cleaned to the utmost, I yet could but feel how intolerable to a workingman the actual situation would have been. To slip early into a quiet corner of the village church which was usually free, and then out again before most of the congregation had well started for the door, was a widely dissimilar thing from regularly attending service with your neighbors.

In overalls and a “jumper,” a man is easily classified; without them, however plain may be the stamp upon him of attempted cleanliness, it is difficult to place him among a Sunday-dressed community, whether in the country or in town, unless he, too, is evidently in Sunday clothes. It is not, in its general application, a question of fashion; the cut of a man’s garments may be that of ten years back, or may be foreign to any fashion known, but his clothing must not bear the marks of toil, and must have the linen accompaniments which render, while they are worn, all manual labor difficult. If he would conform, a man must never worship in garments in which he could work.

A want of conformity might quite possibly expose him to aggressive criticism and ridicule among his accustomed fellows. I never found it so myself in the country, where I always went to church in working clothes because I had no others, for never once was I made to feel the least embarrassment, while many times I wondered at the gracious courtesy which met me. But I was always a stranger, and had never to face companions of long standing. And so, as in many phases of my experiment, the unreality of my position marred, in large measure, the value of the result.

In Chicago, however, the circumstances were not so clearly against me, and they served to give to my own experience something of a normal character. In entering a church door on Sunday mornings, I was objectively in no other station than that of any workingman who may have wished to worship there. The treatment which I received is, therefore, a fair gauge of the reception which another worker might expect.

If it were a single instance I should not mention it, and I venture to offer no generalization, although I am speaking of tests which covered many Sundays and included all the principal churches of the town. All that can be said, I think, is that the uniformity of result is some evidence of what a like-conditioned workingman might count upon in the way of treatment at the hands of fashionable churches.

I was sure, in the first venture or two, that the circumstances were exceptional, and that I had chanced upon churches which, although most evidently of the rich, were yet watchful for every opportunity of welcoming the poor. It was not until I had made the rounds of many churches of many denominations that I realized how general and how sincere among them is the spirit of hospitality to the working poor.

In the vestibules, I always found young men who acted as ushers, and who were charged with the duty of receiving strangers. Never once did I fail of a friendly greeting. With every test I felt increasingly the difficulties of the situation for these young men, and my wonder grew at their graceful tactfulness. A touch of the patronizing in their tone or manner would have changed the welcome to an insult, and any marked effusiveness of cordiality would have robbed it as effectually of all virtue. It was the golden mean of a man’s friendly recognition of his fellow-man, with no regard for difference in social standing, which was the course so successfully followed by these young ushers.

NEVER ONCE DID I FAIL OF A FRIENDLY GREETING.

I had always to avoid a more desirable seat by particularly asking for one far to the rear. And in the pews there was no withdrawing of skirts, nor were there other signs of objection to me as a fellow-worshipper. On the contrary, a hymnal, or a prayer-book would be promptly offered, and sometimes shared; and, at the service-end, a cordial invitation to come again would often follow me from the pew-door, although frequently I noticed that I was conspicuously lonely, as a representative of the poor.